Progressives often see the opposition to the welfare state from conservatives and libertarians as rooted in heartlessness. But is that true?
No doubt there are heartless conservatives and libertarians around – just as there are heartless members of any large group into which anyone can self-identify. But I think there is a common misunderstanding afoot that might be driving part of this perception, one that I want to spend a bit of time unpacking here.
Both conservatives and libertarians frequently make comments like “the welfare state diminishes personal responsibility.” I think progressives often misunderstand this as saying “If you’re struggling, fixing that is your problem. Don’t expect any help from me or anyone else, just pull yourself up by your own bootstraps and get your life on track.” Again, I don’t want to deny that anyone has ever expressed such a sentiment. But presenting this as the standard view of the relationship between helping those who are struggling and personal responsibility is, if not a literal straw man argument, certainly a weak man argument – a logical fallacy Scott Alexander once described in this way:
The argument from personal responsibility I described above is the weak man version of the argument. The stronger and more representative version is something more akin to this: you have a personal responsibility to help people who are in need. When you see your friends, your family, or members of your community struggling, you shouldn’t be looking to city hall or to the state legislature and wondering what they are going to do about it. You should be helping them, directly. To turn away from your duty of care to those close to you, and outsource it to distant state bureaucrats, is to abandon your personal responsibility.
A historical perspective of this view can be found in the book From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State: Fraternal Societies and Social Services, 1890 – 1967. The author, David Beito, points out that prior to the rise of large-scale welfare services, the country was filled with fraternal societies and mutual aid organizations that enabled communities to organize and support each other in times of need. This was especially useful for the most marginalized communities in America – racial minorities, for example, or women, for whom the official system was not particularly concerned. Beito documents that as the welfare state was introduced and expanded, it eventually crowded out these kinds of community centered support networks, driving them all but extinct today.
There are many reasons to find this regrettable, but one worth emphasizing is how these bottom-up mutual aid organizations helped form and maintain the kind of social fabric that is all too weak today. In high crime, low-income areas, the vast majority of criminals target people within their own communities. This wasn’t always the case, even back when people lived in far worse poverty, or faced far more discrimination and social hostility. When community-organized mutual aid societies were strong, that random person’s house you might break into to burglarize wouldn’t belong to a random person. It could be the person who, when your family was struggling, brought over some extra groceries to help you get through your tough times. Or it might be someone whose home took some damage in a storm, and you were part of the neighborhood group that banded together to help repair the damage. These kinds of frequent, personal, and face to face acts of goodwill were commonplace prior to the welfare state – when it was believed that helping your neighbor was a personal responsibility, not a bureaucratic mandate to be carried out by politicians.
But though these kinds of actions have been crowded out by the welfare state, the effect has not been uniform. Arthur Brooks has documented in his book Who Really Cares the differences in behavior in charitable giving and volunteer work. His evidence strongly contradicts the weak-man version of the personal responsibility argument. Brooks finds that the less someone supports welfare state programs, the more they tend to give to charity, to do volunteer work, to donate blood, and actively provide help and support to those in need. This is the exact opposite of what we would expect to see if opposition to the welfare state was rooted in heartlessness and a belief that the poor and struggling should be left to their own devices. By contrast, the more someone supports the welfare state, the more their behavior tends to reflect the thought “Many of my neighbors are struggling and in need, but I have voiced support for welfare programs and taxes were deducted from my paycheck to help pay for those programs, so I’ve fulfilled my responsibility! My hands are clean.”
Opponents of the welfare state reject this mentality. Even though their paychecks are also taxed, and those taxes help pay for those same welfare programs, they still view themselves as bearing a personal responsibility to help people in need. And as Brooks documents, their actions reflect this.
Edmund Burke once wrote “Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without.” By this, he meant that the more people exercised temperance, prudence, and virtue, the less need there was for an authority to restrict people’s behavior. But Burke only points out half the story here. He is correct that “the less there is within, the more there must be without,” but it’s also true that the more it comes from without, the less it develops within. As more people have come to view supporting the needy as not a personal responsibility they must exercise, but simply a state responsibility that requires nothing of them beyond their tax bill, the less people are called upon to actively practice the virtues that help bind communities together. Aristotle was right when he said that excellence comes from engaging in virtuous behavior by habit – and the more the need to practice these habits is removed from without, the less such virtues will develop within.
READER COMMENTS
BS
Jul 19 2023 at 1:26pm
Living Colour, from “Go Away”:
I see the starving Africans on TV
I feel it has nothing to do with me
I sent my twenty dollars to Liveaid
I paid my guilty conscience to go away
Phillip
Jul 19 2023 at 5:49pm
Thanks Kevin, loved your article. There is a wonderful book written by James Bartholomew, The Welfare State we are in, which argues along the same lines.
steve
Jul 19 2023 at 5:56pm
The charity organizations so prevalent long ago were largely staffed by women, which they were able to do since they weren’t employed. That is no longer the case. They couldn’t exist if we wanted them to exist. Also, the majority were unable to meet charitable needs when the economy was poor.
Conservatives (has this been studied for libertarians?) give more to charity since they give more to support their churches. If you exclude conservative giving that goes towards building the church, the church camp, gym, praise band, etc and only goes to stuff like feeding the poor, then depending upon the study they give a bit less or a bit more, but there isn’t much difference. Religious liberals and religious conservatives are equal in donations to charity in most studies. You can look at second order effects to confirm this. As a good rule, conservative states have higher maternal and infant mortality rates than more liberal states. You dont see private giving to try to compensate for this. After Dobbs you would think people willing to give and who value life would be making this a priority.
So your following quote is not true.
““Many of my neighbors are struggling and in need, but I have voiced support for welfare programs and taxes were deducted from my paycheck to help pay for those programs, so I’ve fulfilled my responsibility! My hands are clean.”
Steve
Kevin Corcoran
Jul 19 2023 at 7:53pm
Hey Steve –
I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that you haven’t read either of the books I was discussing, because almost every single one of the talking points you listed out is pretty decisively refuted in each of them. However, you did ask one question work clarifying, when you wondered if this has been studied for libertarians. In Brooks’ book, one of the factors that has a measurable effect on how charitable people are is support for or opposition to the welfare state. If you take two people, who are the same in age, wealth, religion, education, and any other variable you care to control for, but one strongly supports the welfare state and the other strongly opposes the welfare state, the person who opposes the welfare state (statistically) gives significantly more money to charity (including significantly more to non religious causes!) and does far more volunteer work, as well as being more likely to donate blood. Opposition to the welfare state is a trait shared by both libertarians and conservatives, so the findings apply to both groups. And Brooks find that people who strongly support the welfare state commonly and explicitly view the welfare state as a form of charity, and explicitly view their “donations” to the welfare state as fulfilling their charitable obligations. That wasn’t idle speculation on my part.
steve
Jul 20 2023 at 2:19pm
Kevin- I have read (own) Brooks book. It was published in 2006. Since then there have been dozens if not hundreds of papers looking at his claims. Shortly after it was published a group of MIT mathematicians looked at his stats and found lots of problems. Since then there have been lots of follow up studies. I would suggest that you not limit yourself to one book that supports your beliefs but read more widely. If you dont go to church start going and get engaged in the finances and you will realize how much of those charitable donations go to support the church and the people of the church.
Beito I borrowed. It was published in 2000. I have skimmed it. It’s pretty dry, but I dont think he really addresses the lack of available help that we would have now. More importantly, there has been a lot of follow up work which contradicts his claims or significantly modify them. As with Brooks, if you want to ignore later work then I can see why you believe what you do, but I think there is value in looking at later literature that seeks to confirm or weaken arguments.
Jon- Yes, there is no shortage of volunteer groups to help with animals, running events, art clubs etc. Go Fund me helps with those who have a good story. However, if you have a non-compelling chronic disease or if you are just poor we dont have a lot of charities to help. Not none, but not enough to meet a lot of needs. Our soup kitchen (church) as an example relies upon retirees and one or two paid workers, who arent paid a lot. Funds have always dried up when the economy has gone through bad periods. We certainly dont have the people to do hospital type care or home care. Remember that hospital type care in the 1800s and early 1900s was pretty minimal care.
Steve
Kevin Corcoran
Jul 20 2023 at 3:05pm
Hey again Steve –
I see a lot wrong in your reply, but I’m a bit crunched for time so I’ll have to keep this brief (for now, I may return later if I remember).
You say:
Yes, I am aware. In fact, you can find a nice review of that literature in the form of a recent meta-analysis that was done in 2021 reviewing the various follow up studies, including the MIT study you mentioned, to analyze what the evidence shows overall. There are many, many studies with various different findings, but an overall review of the evidence shows that “political conservatives are more charitable than political liberals,” and that controlling for religiosity only “partially accounts for the positive relationship between political conservatives and charitable giving”, and another relevant factor is whether one is inclined to “believe in individual efforts rather than government redistribution.” That is, if you have two equally religious people, but one is a liberal who supports the welfare state and one is a conservative who opposes the welfare state, the conservative one will be more charitable. Again, that’s not just a claim from Brooks’ book from 2006 – that’s what the most recent analysis of the overall literature shows.
You also say:
I would advise you to read the book in full before speculating about what it does or doesn’t address. And it doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence to claim there is “lots of follow up work” which “contradicts or significantly [modifies]” the claims of a book you acknowledge you only just skimmed and don’t cite any examples of the “lots of follow up work”.
You also said:
This is unlikely to happen, as I’m an atheist. I suppose I could try calling up the local churches and ask if they want an atheist to come in and start getting involved with their finances, but my spider-sense is telling me that this is unlikely to get a positive response. Although I admit it would be amusing.
steve
Jul 20 2023 at 7:51pm
Yes, saw the meta-analysis.
In any meta-analysis what you choose to include and omit determines the results. However, at best what is showed is that if there is a difference it is small. What we in the trade call statistically significant but clinically insignificant.
2) It doesn’t really adequately address, IMO, where the charitable giving goes. If we include art museums and think tanks I can see conservatives coming out ahead. If we are talking about going to the poor, it’s probably liberals. A number of studies address that.
3) We took over two hospitals in a rural area that were founded by local church groups. Since I like reading medical history is was pretty fascinating reading through their old records and talking to some of the older people from the area who worked there and had family working at these places. As they grew they had more and more paid staff but they were also dependent upon volunteer help which was essentially always women whose kids were older and/or other family could watch the kids since few worked out of the home. Medical care was a very big chunk of whathtose aid organizations took care of.
Looking at the financial records and adjusting for inflation it is amazing how little they spent, but care was largely custodial. Medical care is always people intensive. Current charity would not be able to find the people needed, with the skills needed and provide the finances for sustained, first world care.
Steve
Kevin Corcoran
Jul 21 2023 at 10:40am
Hey again Steve –
Well, in the span of just a couple of comments you’ve gone from fundamentally disputing the claims that Brooks made and I endorsed (along with a slightly condescending line about “you just need to look at more follow up research”) to saying you were actually already aware that the most recent meta-analysis of the follow-up research is actually in line with the claims Brooks and I were making, but you’re not fully convinced that it does an adequate job of adjusting for all the cofounders you’re worried about. This is such a watered-down version of where you started that I’m perfectly happy to leave it at that 🙂
However, there is one tangential note I want to end on (and this will be the end for me – I’ll likely not be returning to this thread unless something so provocatively interesting is said that I feel like it really merits a response). You expressed doubt about whether support for the welfare state crowds out (in economist-speak) people’s commitment to directly supporting those in need. But it’s worth pointing out, again, that this isn’t idle speculation on either my part or Brooks. The idea that support for the welfare state, or for state-structured redistribution, is used as a substitute for charitable giving and community involvement is a claim that supporters of redistribution and the welfare state have been explicitly making about themselves, for decades, both in academic and popular discourse. If I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard a supporter of the welfare state claim they aren’t obligated to provide for those in need directly even when they have the means to easily do so, on the grounds that “it’s not an individual responsibility, it’s a social responsibility,” I’d probably have about seventy-five dollars. Which is a lot of nickels! If you want specific examples, see Jason Brennan and Chris Freiman’s paper “If You’re An Egalitarian, You Shouldn’t Be So Rich”, where they examine these sorts of claims. They find advocates of the welfare state frequently make claims like supporting those in need is an obligation that only applies to the basic structure of society, not individual behavior, or that there is only an obligation to support just institutions, not to help people directly, or that helping people directly isn’t required of them because it doesn’t address the “root causes” of poverty or inequality, etc. Again, these are all claims that supporters of the welfare state have been openly, explicitly, loudly making for decades – that their responsibility to help those in need is discharged in supporting the welfare state and they bear no personal obligations to do so. If you want to claim that this view isn’t universally held, I agree – that’s why my piece only spoke about tendencies and things being true on average. Brennan and Frieman would agree too – G. A. Cohen is one such example they cite of a leftist who rejects this thinking. And if you yourself don’t hold this view, that’s great! I certainly applaud that. But if you’re trying to claim that this view doesn’t exist, or only marginally exists, then I just don’t know what to tell you.
Cheers, and happy Friday!
nobody.really
Jul 25 2023 at 11:47am
“At this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge,” said the gentleman, taking up a pen, “it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the Poor….”
“Are there no prisons?” asked Scrooge.
“Plenty of prisons,” said the gentleman, laying down the pen again.
“And the Union workhouses?” demanded Scrooge. “Are they still in operation?”
“They are….”
“The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?” said Scrooge.
“Both very busy, sir. [But] a few of us are endeavouring to raise a fund to buy the Poor some meat and drink, and means of warmth…. What shall I put you down for?”
“Nothing!” Scrooge replied…. “I help to support the establishments I have mentioned–they cost enough; and those who are badly off must go there.”
Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol. In Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas (1843).
Grand Rapids Mike
Jul 19 2023 at 11:16pm
Steve your data on infant mortality obviously does not include abortions.
Jon Murphy
Jul 20 2023 at 8:29am
That’s incorrect. There are tons and tons of such organizations that currently exist, both formal and informal. Some have full time staff, some have volunteers. There are entire websites like GoFundMe that exist to solve this problem.
Kevin Corcoran
Jul 20 2023 at 1:04pm
Yeah, I thought this was a particularly bizarre objection. One might as well point to the number of workers needed to plow a field in the 1890s, point out that there aren’t that many available workers to plow fields today, and conclude that therefore we couldn’t manage farmland at the scale of the 1890s today even if we wanted to. In the modern world, we can produce far more with far fewer workers in every sector compared to a century ago, do to advancements in capital and technology. It’s just blatantly special pleading to suggest that in the one case of mutual aid or charitable giving we would need to utilize the same number of workers today as was needed a century ago to get the same outcome. This is a claim that goes against literally all of the data of all sectors of every economy for all of world history. It comes across as the kind of claim someone would make if they were just searching for reasons to give for rejecting a conclusion they had already decided to reject in advance.
Kevin Corcoran
Jul 20 2023 at 3:21pm
Ugh. *Due to advancements in capital and technology, not “do to.” That’s what I get for writing at too much of a rapid-fire pace. I shall go stand in the corner now and feel appropriately shamed for my silly typo.
Todd Moodey
Jul 20 2023 at 8:12am
Kevin–
There’s a symmetry in the effects of state-funded welfare on personal responsibility, prudential behavior and the like that is vividly described in the 1999 article by Theodore Dalrymple you recently referenced. Just as those on the “giving side” can assuage their consciences by virtue of compulsory tax payments, those on the “receiving side” come to view the aid they receive as a right for which no gratitude or attempt at peronal betterment is due. The welfare state’s impersonal, bureaucratized way of supporting the impoverished (the meaning of which is different from “materially poor”) is truly corrosive.
Regards,
Todd
Grand Rapids Mike
Jul 20 2023 at 11:13am
The corrosive nature of various forms of welfare can be subtle and long lasting. In family members, welfare created an sensitizing effect on the bright family members for not doing much while the money for not doing much was there. When the sensitizing effect of welfare was taken away, while it took awhile, the bright people starting like acting like bright people got a job and became productive.
This effect is not surprising, it is basic economics.
robc
Jul 20 2023 at 1:10pm
Saw a recent aricle (will search for link and reply with it if I can find it) showing no statistical significance between rate of charity and things like government spending. A larger welfare state doesn’t lead to less giving and vice versa.
The only significant correlation they could find was with social security tax. The larger that was, the smaller the charity.
I think the study was across 24 nations.
robc
Jul 20 2023 at 1:13pm
https://www.cafonline.org/docs/default-source/about-us-policy-and-campaigns/gross-domestic-philanthropy-feb-2016.pdf
Recent apparently means published 7 years ago, but I just saw it recently.
Kevin Corcoran
Jul 20 2023 at 1:51pm
Hey robc –
This looks interesting – I looked it over but it seems to be addressing a different question than what I’m talking about. The report you cited shows the difference in charitable giving between countries, taking taxes into account, whereas what I’m looking at is the difference in charitable giving within countries, taking attitudes and personal philosophies into account rather than taxes. Conservatives and libertarians in the United States still pay the same taxes to welfare programs that progressives do, but still, all else equal, people who are more likely to be opposed to the welfare state are more likely to engage in charitable giving, volunteer work, and community service than people who support the welfare state, and vice versa.
Richard W Fulmer
Jul 21 2023 at 9:23am
My father-in-law worked with patients suffering from Hansen’s Disease – leprosy. One of the terrible things about the disease is that people lose their sense of feeling. We tend to think of pain as an enemy, but one of my father-in-law’s colleagues called it, “the best friend nobody wants.”
Imagine putting your hand on a hot stove and not realizing it until you smell your flesh burning. We need that feedback loop to keep us alive and in one piece.
Governments and doting parents can create a sort of moral leprosy by not allowing people and children to face the consequences of their actions, weakening or even destroying the feedback loops linking cause and effect.
As the consequences of self-destructive actions (such as dropping out of school, having children out of wedlock, and drug and alcohol abuse) are increasingly borne by others, the incidence of such behavior will rise. At the same time, as the rewards for hard work, perseverance, and integrity fall, such virtues can be expected to fade.
Richard W Fulmer
Jul 21 2023 at 9:55am
We can’t expect people to “pull themselves up by their bootstraps” – a physical impossibility. But we can expect them – either in school or on the job – to show up on time, be willing to listen and learn, do the required work, put in a little extra effort, and respect others. In other words, we can expect them to help themselves and to let others help them. None of this requires extraordinary talent or intelligence, and no one should be excused because the world is unfair or because society, their parents, or their environment are imperfect. To demand less is not kindness, it is to condemn people to unfulfilled lives.
Robert EV
Jul 23 2023 at 3:12pm
I have a fundamental problem with this basic outlining of the issue but I won’t get into it because I don’t even know where to start. You’re undoubtedly right about some left-wing and big-state centrists idea on the opposition to state-welfare. But I have the same amount of difficulty communicating with them as I do here.
Which welfare state programs? AFAIK, the largest welfare state program in the US is social security. The second and third largest welfare state programs in the US are medicare/medicaid and the military (subtracting out material costs) and the apparatuses built up around military retirees.
Which kinds of charities? Which kinds of volunteer work? And how many of the genuine welfare-oriented charities that they may contribute to are equally open to everyone?
People are not gooses and ganders to be sauced for dinner. It takes multiple kinds of approaches to reach everyone in a manner that works for them, both in terms of receipt of welfare, and in terms of contributions to welfare. “The fox and the stork”
This is the fundamental issue. My dad was/is a socially active person and expected me to be a fricking carbon copy it seemed. And as I wanted a relationship with him I did try to meet him more than halfway at times, to my ultimate detriment. I’d be a lot richer and be contributing a heck of a lot more to the common good had he actively helped me find what’s best for me. I’ll drop it here, personal anecdotes are whatever. But it, along with some other things, highlighted to me the importance of multiplicity of any systems meant to provide opportunity or support, so that people had ready access to ones that worked for them.
Bring the “welfare state” down to the local government level as much as possible and half of your objections are answered. If this is through federal-state-local partnerships the resources available for need can even be equalized. And local opportunities for volunteer work will be available, within the “welfare state” as well as outside of it.
It seem like you’re trying to make everyone like yourself. It’s fine to push back against the loss of what you love in community engagement. It’s even important to do so. But please recognize that such engagement, when amped up as an expectation and effective requirement, can seem actively hostile, and can actively repel people who just want to live their lives, pay their taxes, do their jobs, and help out that way, as well as be helped out that way when they are in need.
P.S. I stopped donating blood when I started feeling run down for a week afterward, and after having my restless leg syndrome really amp up after donating double red cells. At the age of 21 or 22 I decided not to treat my baldness with drugs because, at the time, they were reasons for indefinite deferral from blood donation. I’m a bald 40-something and think that I’d look weird with a full head of hair.
P.P.S Do these political conservatives deduct their charitable contributions from their taxes? If so, what was the impact on donations from the 2018 US tax adjustments?
P.P.P.S I never understand how these studies determine whether or not someone contributed, and how much if they did. I don’t itemize; most people don’t these days. Should kickstarter donations be considered? That time I took some brand new latex pillows to the local religious-homeless shelter? The Taco Bell gift card I gave to the homeless guy? What about the time I volunteered to supervise two high school students (from a well-off high school, but whatever) as interns at my job, who otherwise wouldn’t have had internships.
T Boyle
Jul 24 2023 at 1:47pm
I think your interpretation of what libertarians and conservatives mean is overly progressive (in the political sense). That is, you’re assuming that “having a heart” means that you buy into the idea that people with problems must be rescued. This amounts to embracing codependency as the only way to “have a heart”.
As any self-help guru, actual psychologist, or addiction expert will tell you, codependency is not at all the same thing as “having a heart” and it often hurts its intended beneficiary in the long run (in addition to hurting the codependent).
I think what libertarians and conservatives mean by emphasizing “personal responsibility” is that most people with problems also have substantial ability to address those problems themselves, and that people should be rescued only to the extent that their own efforts cannot address the problem. This means no, you do not rush in to rescue everyone; they need to take the steps that are within their own powers, first. So, if someone has the ability to address the problem but chooses not to, then it is not incumbent on anyone else to rescue them. On the other hand, if they take those steps they can take, libertarians and conservatives are generally supportive of providing additional assistance. And, of course, for those who have very little ability to address their problems, there are few souls heartless enough to oppose outright rescue.
This is not the heartless strawman “lift yourself by your bootlaces.” However, it is also not your interpretation, which I would reposition as the view that rescue – or charity – is the only solution consistent with “having a heart”, with the only question being whether that charity is privately and voluntarily funded or should be funded with government resources.
nobody.really
Jul 25 2023 at 5:41pm
How should we measure “heartlessness”? Should we focus on the giver; or on the receiver? Should we care about actions, or about results?
For some people, helping those in need is a morality play: The point is to demonstrate the giver’s virtue.
For others, helping those in need reflects a desire to promote the welfare of those in need.
For most purposes I subscribe to the latter view, so I would look to outcomes: Let us compare jurisdictions based on their social safety nets, and compare the variables we care about among the populations that live in those jurisdictions. If public support and private giving are trade-offs, do we observe that people have better outcomes in environments with less public support and greater private giving? Or in places with more public support and less private giving? If the welfare state in fact correlates with worse outcomes on the variables we care about, then arguably we would want to cut back on that state. And if the welfare state promotes better outcomes, arguable we’d want to enhance it. I don’t mean to ignore givers; I merely mean to focus on results—results for both givers and receivers.
“Jesus said to him, ‘If you want to be perfect, go and sell all you have and give the money to the poor, and you will have riches in heaven; then come and follow me.’ When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he was very rich.” Matthew 19: 21-22.
I admire Kevin Corcoran’s Christ-like admonition. But I have to wonder that either he a) has given away all his possessions or b) lives among a class of people who have few needs and many resources, and never looks beyond that class. In a stratified society, “those close to you” will tend to come from the same social class, and this will result in the rich enjoying a much better social safety net than the poor.
Moreover, because Kevin Corcoran’s formula taxes people for becoming aware of the needs of their friends, their family, or members of their community, it rewards people for maintaining ignorance about the needs of others. I surmise that much of immigration and zoning policies—and, indeed, Disney’s policies restricting admissions to its theme parks—reflect an effort to keep people from having to confront realities about the poverty around us, precisely because such realization would prompt feelings of guilt among others. Ignorance is bliss.
But is there any road to bliss for those of us who are aware that needs exceed our personal resources, and who yet desire to retain a substantial share of our resources for ourselves? One mechanism is a formula for identifying how much of your resources to dedicate to others. Public programs and adequate taxation provides one such formula. The Christian tradition of tithing arguably provides another. Yet neither system entails devoting all you have to promoting the welfare of others. Both these mechanisms recognize a distinction between the share of your resources to be expended for others and the share you may use for your own purposes—a kind of “sphere of autonomy” often celebrated by libertarians.
What does “crowded out” mean? That taxes to finance the social safety net left insufficient funds to finance mutual aid societies? Or that social safety nets did such a good job as to render these societies obsolete?
For what it’s worth, Robert Putnam’s The Upswing tracks the rise and fall of all kinds of measures of social capital, including but not limited to mutual aid societies, and finds that they all measured low in the Gilded Age (roughly 1890), expanded through the 1950s and 1960s, and declined thereafter. Yes, mutual aid societies provided various kinds of insurance—but many of those societies lacked the actuarial foundations to survive the demands of the Great Depression. Also, many mutual aid societies provided a variety of other services that became obsolete for reasons unrelated to the social safety net. For example, many mutual aid societies provided entertainment, but the growth of mass media—TVs, films, radios, records—reduced the demand for this kind of union-hall entertainment. Mutual aid societies also provided solidarity for large, despised immigrant groups such as the Irish and Italians. But as members of these groups became more integrated into the larger society, their need for ethnic solidarity declined. Do we really think the prevalence of St. Patrick’s Day and Columbus Day parades declined as a result of the social welfare state?
Yet we observed some ethnic groups that society did not integrate so readily—in particular, black communities and “China towns.”
Yes, in ethnic enclaves we observed a relatively high degree of class integration, with the black doctor and the black shoe-shiner attending the same church and sending their kids to the same schools. And we often observed informal mutual aid societies, often within families: an expectation that people would share what they had with those who faced affliction. This resulted in an erosion of capital accumulation. Why save if you will be expected to surrender anything you have for the benefit of whoever needs it?
In contrast, with increased RACIAL integration, we observed reduced SOCIAL integration. That is, the most upwardly mobile members of the excluded societies moved out, leaving behind the least upwardly mobile. These “ghetto” neighborhoods became associated with crime and poverty—and a sense of resentment toward those who had been raised and nurtured by the community and then left, breaking the implicit mutual aid pact.
So should libertarians celebrate the end of racial discrimination? Or bemoan the resulting breach of implicit compacts of mutual aid?
Temperance, prudence, and virtue—as judged by whom? As far as I know, these words are conclusory—having no objective content separate from the opinion of whoever judges such matters. They reflect a “I know it when I see it” standard.
Thus we find a spectrum of libertarianism. At one end we find people who reject regulation because they embrace their own sense of moral rectitude and self-control, and distain those who do not: “With freedom comes responsibility.” At the other end are the libertines who reject regulation, but also reject the moralists as attempting to impose proto-state restrictions: “By what authority do you purport to put conditions on my freedom?” And wherever you find yourself on the spectrum, you will regard the people elsewhere on the spectrum as extreme.
A moralist might argue that people need to (have a duty to?) act charitably or the state will do it for them. The libertine would deny that the state has any such role, regardless of whether anyone acts charitably.
In fairness, Kevin Corcoran does not focus on this idea. Rather, he argues that if individuals do not regularly exercise “a controlling power upon [their] will and appetite,” their capacity to do so will atrophy. That sounds right to me.
Moreover, I share Kevin Corcoran’s concern about how people suffer from a loss of social cohesion, even if they do not recognize this fact, or fail to recognize how public policies have altered the context in which they make “free” choices. In particular, I suspect that social safety nets free people to avoid many types of social interactions that they might otherwise have had to face. For most purposes, I celebrate freeing people to act according to their preferences—but perhaps we do more harm than good when we enable people in need to avoid “hitting rock bottom” and asking for help. I don’t know how to measure the good vs. the harm arising from social safety net programs under these circumstances.
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